01. EARLY DAYS: DIFFICULTIES AND MISTAKES

In my early days, photography was not an end in itself

I never though about becoming a photographer

I found photography a bit by chance

I was studying Fine Arts but ever since High School

I was interested in photography, with some peers we even

started a photo lab to do some prints.

It was all experimental, a way to broaden my range of creativity

and I was lucky to have Cristina Garcia Rodero as teacher.

She was the one to put the ich of photography

and made me see that it could be as creative, valid, important

artistically speaking as I thought of other arts:

sculpture, painting or any other Fine Arts specialty.

While studying Fine Arts,

I discovered photographers that Cristina showed us

One of them was Javier Vallhonrat, she spoke

highly of him. He had been her student, and that made me discover

not only photography but fashion photography

-in the 90s started to become something very creative in Spain-

It was creative enough for someone like Cristina

I discovered that photography was valid in every single way, and some vere very creative

and one was Fashion Photography.

It was the time from Mariscal, where also

Graphic Designers were starting to fly high

Well, photography was taking all the creativity around it

and it started to have Fashion Photography

in this country to give very important names

for sure Im leaving some behind, but for example:

Miguel Oriola, Ferrater, Vallhonrat, Alejandro Cabrera

Michael Brae, a lot more... Outumuro...

I suddenly discovered there was tons of creativity

within photography and that it was something

as valid as any other art to express myself.

At the beginning I started as self-taught photographer

what i wanted was to make a portrait of what was around me

and make it visible.

I remember the first time my dad lent me his camera

I went on a "trip" with it and everything was

really well framed but all the photos were

out of focus. He gave me a camera which had

a little paper with the diaphragms and speeds according to the light

I memorized it all, but I forgot to focus,

as simple as it seems.

I was looking through the viewfinder, everything sharp

and I thought "oh magic!" and that was going to be perfect.

I took a long time to learn. I wasn't so lucky,

like people today, and I had very basic knowledge

about photography.

That has brought me many problems in the long run

and some advantages too, I mean,

I haven't followed "rules" about what can or cannot be done

but I've been researching and adapting it

to what my artistic job has required.

For a long time, I've followed techniques that were

not correct, or what other said were not,

but as long as there is an image to create,

there is a possibility to use some creativity.

When I was doing negative but developing them as photographic slides

everyone was doing, at the time,

exactly the opposite,

and at first those photos were "ugly" but ended up being

very nice and also interesting. It was not a mistake,

it was a different way to show the images.

So I believe that upon "mistakes" or "that cannot be done"

you have to always think: "Why not?"

"What is the advantage of me doing this?"

"Why cannot I invert a process?"

"Why cannot I make the pixel something interesting?"

The most important for me was to make

my photography work to tell or make feel something

different of what the reality was.

I used to do all kinds of photographic work because

you can take always something from whatever you do.

There are some jobs you take because of the level

of creativity you can add into the mix,

other because you will use a different kind of camera,

sometimes because lighting is a challenge...

The main goal is to be able to contribute

to the photo something new, something

you want to experiment with, which at the end

the photo will able to transmit to others.

Learning from the mistakes.

What you really have to keep in mind,

as a photographer, is that challenges

will come your way every day.

Challenges that sometimes you think

they will be easy but they end up not being easy at all

Some others that will be within your knowledge

and some others that will end up in mistakes.

I remember an interview, I used to make photos

for interviews, and I had a couple of minutes

to make a photo to an actress at Jardín Botánico,

and well I loaded the camera, I started to shoot,

I took the shoot to the point I finished the roll and

I started running the film..

36.. 36.. 36 ..

and I realized the film roll was not correctly loaded.

Crisis. The actress was leaving, I asked

"please?", and she gave me time to make 3 photos

and well, here I am. I put my whole attention

to those 3 photos and they ended up being used.

Most likely, if all 36 photos had turned out well,

I would probably have chosen the last 3.

But there is no need to be afraid nor dramatic.

I remember the first time I made a photo retouch

I had to but a bathing cap to a model,

we put all this modeling clay, make up as she was bald

and I poked spaghetti shaped clay around her head

How did we do the analog work?

Shooting a whole film roll, developing a couple of prints

to check if it was okay, if there was a need to adjust or force the negative,

so we shot that film, we developed the photo clip,

it was great, and then the rest of the film was developed

two hours later, but the whole thing ...

everything was ruined, the lab's fault.

There was an issue with the lab's temperature

and everything was wasted. We ended up only

with the first 3 images, and we had

to complete the job with that.

There are problems that you cannot avoid,

there are some that will happen because

you are having a bad day,

but you can learn from everything.

You have to make a 1000 mistakes to have

1000 solutions,

and the more issues you resolve,

the less problems you will have in the future.